Hear Ye, Bear Ye: Housing Values, Noise Levels, and Noise Inequality

Abstract

We explore how a 2017 federal government policy announcement and 2019 implementation requiring quieter engines in some new commercial aircraft impacted the relationships between home values, transportation noise, and demographics. We focus on aircraft noise in Census tracts across the contiguous U.S., as well as separating road and aircraft noise. Using a panel of tract-level noise data for three years (2016, 2018, and 2020), along with Census data on demographics, house prices, and property characteristics, we first demonstrate numerically and graphically the extent to which some residents experience disproportionate amounts of noise by constructing measures of inequality. Next, we rely on the policy announcement to test the hypothesis that this requirement is a cause of structural change in how aircraft noise affected house prices across demographic groups. We find Census tracts with greater Black population after the announcement and implementation have higher average house values. Also, Census tracts with at least 45 dBA of noise, the federally designated cutoff for annoyance, show higher house values after the announcement and implementation.

Keywords: Q5, R3, R4 home values, transportation noise, inequality, environmental justice

JEL Classification: Q5, R3, R4